Various avionics systems are employed within aircrafts that perform various functions therein. Aircrafts with a training and/or tactical functionality have the particular requirement that the avionics systems must be able to perform mission and/or tactical functions as well in addition to their civil functionality, i.e. the functionalities that are mandatory for the aircraft to receive the “safe to fly” certification from certification authorities. Such training aircrafts are suitable for training a pilot in a partially simulated environment. This simulated environment corresponds to a training/tactical syllabus that contains various scenarios prepared to train a pilot to react to such scenarios accordingly. As opposed to the civil functionalities, the tactical system components/functionality of a military trainer aircraft requires update on a frequent basis. This may be due to new requirements from the customer, or modification of previous requirements to better fit the tactical training syllabus. The cost associated with a full certification of these components is high when such systems include civil functionality. Civil functionality requires higher levels of compliance with certification and safety regulations. Higher levels of compliance entail a greater cost and workload in terms of testing, documentation and relations with the certifying authority. Thus, the repeated certification of the avionics system causes significant delays and also generates high costs after each update, even a minor one, of the tactical/mission systems.
The objective of the present invention is thus to provide an aircraft avionics system which overcomes the above-identified drawbacks, i.e. allowing a frequent update of the mission systems/functionality while reducing the requirement of a lengthy and cost intensive repeated certification of the avionics system with the certification authorities, while at the same time ensuring that such updates of the mission systems/functionality do not jeopardize the “safe to fly” designation of the aircraft.